An implantable medical device (IMDs) is implanted in a patient to monitor, among other things, electrical activity of a heart and to deliver appropriate electrical and/or drug therapy, as required. A wide range of implantable medical devices are available, including pacemakers, cardioverters, defibrillators, and implantable cardioverter-defibrillators. In use, IMDs may be surgically implanted in a patient to monitor the patient's cardiac activity and to provide electrical stimulation in order to correct irregular cardiac rhythms (e.g., arrhythmias).
It is important that IMDs are operated under optimal automatic sensing control parameters to provide adequate sensing, while preventing oversensing or undersensing issues in either the atrial or ventricular channels. Such oversensing refers to a state when the IMD may consider a sensed signal to be a heartbeat when, in fact, it is not one. Conversely, undersensing refers to a state when the IMD may not consider a sensed signal to be a heartbeat when, in fact, it is one. In conventional systems, such sensing problems have lead to inappropriate mode switches, rate branch discrimination, or delivery or inhibition of device therapies such as anti-tachycardia pacing, cardioversion, defibrillation shocks, etc. There is a need for a method and system that automatically recognizing and correcting sensing problems associated with an IMD. The present disclosure addresses this need and provides related advantages.
Overview
Systems and associated methods are provided for automatically identifying a problem with sensing heart activity. In use, a plurality of heartbeats is sensed utilizing an implantable medical device. Further, data associated with the heartbeats is collected and stored. To this end, a problem with the sensing of the heartbeats (e.g., oversensing, undersensing, etc.) may be automatically identified and corrected, utilizing the data.